The Astros Went 6-3 On This Road Trip. Yet, Astros Fans were Big Mad.

I consider whether to adopt the more frustrated and pessimistic takes of other Astro fans, and say no. To me, this attitude conflict with the principle that "baseball happens."

The Astros won yesterday. Again.

Thanks to a tie-breaking home run from Mauricio Dubon, an effective start from Hunter Brown, and Hector Neris dancing through the raindrops in the bottom of the 8th, the Astros beat the A’s 3-2. The win meant the Astros won the series against the A’s 3-1 and that they went 6-3 on the 9 game road trip to Anaheim, Denver, and the East Bay.

I was pleased. The Astros won the game, won the series, and won the road trip.

I got a text shortly after from a friend that sounded less pleased than me. “They got lucky today, but I’ll take it.”

But looking over the different ways I interact with Astros fans—on Twitter, in an Astros Facebook group, and in text threads with friends—I don’t think most Astros fans share my contentment with the winning road trip.

Instead, my friend seems closer to the dominant emotions of Astros fans—annoyance and frustration, and in many cases, anger.

I’ll spend the rest of the post addressing the question of whether I’m doing this wrong. If I should adopt the attitude that I see a good bit from other Astros fans. Should I be more annoyed and frustrated with how the Astros are playing.

Am I in the wrong here?

Am I Principal Skinner, except replace “the children” with “Astros Twitter.”

There seem to me a number of reasons why Astros fans are quite frustrated with the team’s play since the All Star Break..

• They were playing the two of the worst teams in baseball the last two series.

• Before that, they were playing an Angels team down to only one of the greatest baseball players anyone has ever seen.

• The offense was punchless in the last two games in Oakland.

• The team did not win any blowout games on the road trip, despite the poor quality of the opponents.

• The Rangers played well over that stretch and the Astros lost a game in the AL West standings.

It seems to me that all of these frustrations have a similar root—expectations. Astros fans expected the team to sweep the A’s and Rockies, to easily handle the Angels, to score lots of runs and to easily win the games this week, and to easily win the AL West.

Yet, I look at that list and say, well, “that’s baseball.” The worst teams in baseball still win win about one-third of their games, and the best teams still lose about one-third. And over the six games against A’s and Rockies, the bad teams won exactly one-third of them and good team lost one-third.

Offenses have slumps. Or bad games. Which the Astros did over the last two days in Oakland. Overall, they scored 20 runs over the six games against the Rockies and A’s. But I only need to go back to last weekend—the beginning of this road trip—to find the Astros offense working well. They scored over 9 runs a game in winning the series against the Angels.

That offenses have good weekends and bad weekends is part of baseball. But overall, this offense has performed well over the recent period. The offense has averaged 4.84 runs per game since June 9, which is markedly better than how the offense had been doing before that date—they had been averaging 4.49 runs per game up to that point.

The close games were of course overly tense and I would have certainly enjoyed a laugher or two in the Astros favor. But go back to the point about how even bad baseball teams win a bunch of games. One cannot assume that any baseball game will be a blowout.

Maurcio Dubon hit the winning home run in the top of the 9th yesterday in Oakland and bat flipped in happiness.

But overall, the last bullet point from the list above seems most relevant. The Astros are not leading the AL West. The Astros are on pace for 91 wins right now, which would be the lowest the team has won in a full season since 2016, which is also, not coincidentally, the last time in a full season the Astros did not win the AL West.

This is of course unpleasant, and I’d much rather the team be on the way to 106 wins like they were in 2022, or even 95 wins and a comfortably lead in the AL West like they did in 2021.

But that they are not is because baseball happens. Injuries have taken away this team’s two best offensive players for significant chunks of the season and two members of their rotation for the rest of the season. Regression has come for their star third baseman and their starting pitcher who led two no-hitters last season.

The team is nowhere as good as it was in 2022. But it may as good as it was in 2021, when the team got to within two wins of a World Series title.

The hitting has been mid-tier this season, but Yordan Alvarez looks like he will return from the IL to face the Rangers this week and Jose Altuve is not far behind. The team will obviously be better if both of those stars are in the lineup.

The bullpen has been solid and the starting pitching has held the line despite all of the injuries. Acquiring a starting pitcher or two at the Trade Deadline will go a long way to shoring up that part of this team.

Most importantly, the Astros are currently in playoff position. Thanks to the 6-3 road trip, the Astros have moved into the #5 seed in the AL playoffs. They are one game ahead of the Blue Jays for the #6 seed and three games ahead of the Yankees and Red Sox—both of whom are 53-47.

That the Astros are in playoff position right now is no guarantee that they will stay there the rest of the season. And chasing down the Rangers is a prize worth having, since the AL West crown almost certainly comes with a bye to the division round of the playoffs. There are bigger fish to fry over the rest of the season.

But the fact that despite all of the injuries and all of the regression, the fact that the Astros are in playoffs right now seems a worthwhile fact to consider. And yet, as I communicate with Astros fans this season, I wonder if they actually know this fact at all.

I started this post by questioning whether I should adopt the more pessimistic, frustrated, and sometimes angry attitude I see from other Astro fans. And I can’t. For me, one of the joys of baseball is that it is such a long march across a season. Teams ebb and flow across the course of a season, having high points and low points. Even really good teams lose a lot, while bad teams win a lot.

Putting too much into one game, one series, or one road trip runs against that ethos, especially when there is so much more of the season to go. I’m going to try to avoid frustration and anger.

I just won’t guarantee that I’ll do it in this week’s series against the Rangers.

I picked June 9 because that is the day that Yordan Alvarez went on the IL. One would have expected the Astros to decline offensively with one of the handful of best hitters on the planet sidelined, but with improvements from Kyle Tucker, Jose Abreu, Chas McCormick, and Corey Julks, the offense has improved. Yordan is expected back tonight and that should only boost the offense more.